


Years Upon Years, Hours Upon Hours

by maginot



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Season 7 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 16:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15644235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maginot/pseuds/maginot
Summary: “We’ve lost so much of our lives, Shiro.”  He doesn’t mean for his voice to break like it does.“From fighting?”Keith shakes his head, and he’s crying. “Just fromliving. What year is it? How old are you? How old am I? How long has it been since we’ve sat on a couch at the Garrison and drank tea?”





	Years Upon Years, Hours Upon Hours

The gravity on earth makes Keith feel like his shoes are too heavy. Technically, it’s not that much different than the gravity used in the Blade of Marmora ships or the Castle, or that different than the gravity on many of the planets they visited-- but there’s something strange about it, something that used to be familiar and unnoticed but now makes Keith feel like every step is twice as hard as it was before. It makes him feel slow, makes his movements drag just so. The air feels heavy in his lungs and he can’t tell if that’s because that’s just way the air has always been on Earth or if that’s just how it is now since the Galra have invaded. Either way, it's hard to breathe. 

They give him clothes to wear and a room to sleep in and it's a blur. It's a blur of a first day back and this is not what he thought it would be like, not what he wanted to happen at all. 

He drifts. He drifts in and out of his thoughts. He meets Lance’s family. He talks to Matt. He watches Shiro get swept away by Iverson and Sam. 

They have a meeting. He knows he's there. He sits next to Shiro and he knows he's there but he doesn't really see much of anything besides the facts of the doom and ruins of the place that he used to call home. 

When was the last time he slept through the night? 

Keith, Hunk, and Lance take a minute to walk through the halls after they've eaten-- all a little lost and scared-- feeling out of place and suddenly smaller than they've felt in a long while. Lance stops them at a particular student lounge. It's empty now, but he recounts a story where he and Hunk had hidden behind the couch long enough to sneak out on the town after curfew. 

Hunk laughs, his normal spark returning after finding out about his family earlier. He says, “God, that was something. That feels like so long ago! It must've been-”

Then he stops talking, and none of them fill in the blanks because none of them have an answer. 

Keith wonders how old he is. 

Keith finds his way back to the room they've assigned him, and he's happy to see Kosmo (as the others have named him without his consent) asleep and curled up on his bed. “Hey, boy,” Keith coos at him. The wolf nuzzles his hand gently and Keith takes it as a sign that he should lie down and get some rest, too. He takes off his cadet uniform and then he does. 

Keith dreams. 

In his dreams, he's back on the Castle. He's wearing his cadet uniform still and it takes him a minute to get his bearings. Something like relief floods him, the feeling of home. He doesn't see the others, but he's so happy that they're back home that he needs to find them and tell them. Shiro's room is the closest to his and he makes it there first. The automatic door slides open, and Shiro's there, but he's--he's sitting on his bed in his officer’s uniform, looking exactly the same as he did the day Keith met him. His face is unscarred, his hair is jet black, his arms are both intact and made of flesh. Keith calls out his name and his voice sounds like he's underwater. 

“Shiro.”

Shiro looks up at him, that same soft smile that Keith’s seen a hundred times perched upon his face, but when he sees Keith, it falls. Fear sneaks its way into Shiro’s eyes. His mouth twists up and gapes, his hands clench into fists. “Keith? Keith? What happened to you?” Shiro’s look of fear turns to abject horror. “Keith, oh my god, look at you, you’re--”

“What?” Keith looks down at himself, and now his cadet uniform is covered in blood. When he looks back to Shiro, his arm has been severed and is lying next to him on the floor. He’s bleeding heavily. Keith feels a sudden weight of a sword in his hand. Shiro’s voice wavers.“Keith, what happened to you? Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“You let them kill Earth.”

Keith wakes up.

He jumps out of bed, breath heaving. He’s shaking when he looks down at himself and gives a sigh when he sees himself in a plain white shirt and his black sleep shorts. He sinks down on the floor next to his bed and tucks his head between his knees. He forces his breaths in and out slowly, counting on each inhale and exhale to try and slow them. Eventually it works, and the sound in Keith’s ears is finally quiet enough for him to listen for the sounds of immediate destruction outside of his room. He doesn’t hear it. 

Kosmo nuzzles him and Keith lets him for a moment. Then he gets up. 

Keith wants to see Shiro. 

He dresses back into his cadet uniform, because even as shaken as he is he knows that this is war, and he’s not about to get caught looking like a slacker in a place where he doesn’t quite feel like he fits in anymore, like he ever fit in at the Garrison at all. 

It takes him a while to find Shiro’s room, and admittedly he only does so because it’s labeled. He waits a breath before knocking. 

Shiro doesn’t answer.

Keith knocks again, a little harder this time.

Shiro opens the door while Keith’s hand is still raised in the air. 

There Shiro is, dressed in his officer’s uniform, and Keith knows that he saw it earlier at the meeting but now, it’s like seeing it for the first time in so long that his chest aches with it. His brain enters a time jump and he’s inside of Shiro’s room and the door closes behind him and he’s still staring.

Shiro’s hair is still white and his sleeve is pinned up from where he’s missing an arm. His face is is scarred and has shadows under his eyes from being worried and tired and crying. He looks like a different man from the one Keith saw in his dream earlier, but he doesn't. The familiarity of being at the Garrison, standing in Shiro’s room with him in his uniform just gawking at how stunningly beautiful he is feels so familiar to Keith that it takes his breath away. The feeling starts out as a gentle breeze through a cracked window, but then Keith inhales through his nose and he didn’t remember the smell of the Garrison until right this moment. 

He’s been here before, maybe not here exactly, but this-- standing in front of Shiro with his mouth agape and his heart aching, open and pounding in his chest. 

A year and a half in space just flying his lion taught Keith a lot. He worked hard and he didn’t stop to rest the entire time. He didn’t stop to put down the entire weight of the team the entire time either. Keith learned that love doesn't always fade to nothingness, but sometimes it just lies dormant until you’re ready for it again. 

Keith doesn’t know if he’s ready, but there love is, knocking into him so hard he can’t even move. 

Shiro’s head cocks to the side in question. “You okay, Keith?” His face is worried now. 

Keith feels the swarm of emotions brewing inside of him start to boil, start to threaten to take over him. He feels tears prickle at the corners of his eyes and his breaths pick up and then he forces himself to take a deep breath in and when he breathes out-- he pushes the panic aside. He calms his mind like he now knows how to do. 

He says, “It’s a real sight seeing you in that again.”

Shiro scoffs, “Because I look so different?”

“No,” Keith says, voice wavering into a shape of a laugh. “Because you look exactly the same.” 

That stuns Shiro, because he’s quiet. But Keith knows it’s not a bad thing. It’s just one of those _Shiro_ things that he gets himself all worked up about and Keith is the only person who manages to pick up on it. He recovers after a beat, telling Keith, “I never thought I’d see you in that again either.”

Keith laughs fully this time. “You and me both.” 

Shiro makes them both tea because it’s the middle of the night, and even though they’re both on some weird ‘floating in space’ sleep schedule, they both know that they should at least be attempting to relax. Keith stirs his, blowing on it and watching the steam rise from the cup and curl in the air. 

Into the peace of the moment, Shiro says, “We’ve done this before.” He sounds amused, but almost like he’d forgotten about the countless nights he and Keith had spent drinking tea over the years. 

“Here, up there,” Keith raises his eyes to the ceiling, to space. “And back here again.” 

Shiro smiles into his cup, takes a sip. “I’m proud of you. you know that, Keith.”

“Yeah--” Keith starts, because he does know, but Shiro cuts him off. 

“I’ve always known that you could do amazing things. You’ve never ceased to amaze me. But this, Keith, what you’ve been doing now, and since I stopped leading the team, it’s something else. It’s something extraordinarily. I’m just… ” Shiro pauses, looking for the words. He looks down into his cup. “Really happy that I could be here for all that.” 

Keith’s heart flips, remembering a time when they were sure that Shiro wouldn’t, remembering all the times he thought Shiro gone or dead or lost to it all. “Me too,” Keith says, but it doesn’t feel like enough. 

It isn’t. 

Keith knows he’s brave. He knows he’s spent a lot of years being brave, but there’s one thing he’s always been so scared of. 

He looks Shiro in the eyes. They’ve been through so much. They’ve seen so much. They’ve lost so much

He’s not scared anymore. 

“We’ve lost so much of our lives, Shiro.” He doesn’t mean for his voice to break like it does, but the sudden realization of just how much time has passed hits Keith so hard he can’t help it. 

Shiro’s body leans in closer to him. They’re sitting facing each other on Shiro’s couch, but now Shiro inches just that much closer. “From fighting?”

Keith shakes his head, and he’s crying. “Just from living. What year is it? How old are you? How old am I? How long has it been since we’ve sat on a couch at the Garrison and drank tea?”

He sees Shiro’s brain work, trying to answer the questions. Then he sees Shiro’s eyes fill up, because not even he can figure out if they’ve really aged three years during their fight with Lotor, or if every day they skipped through counts. “I don’t know, Keith.” 

Then Keith is moving, and he’s in front of Shiro, standing over him in a way that he hasn’t since he watched Allura breathe life back into his body. It was so long ago. If he doesn’t get this all out now, maybe it’ll all get trapped inside of him and never make its way out. Neither of them can die without him having said the words once more, and with the world like it is and time like it is for them, who knows when that will be? 

He stands between Shiro’s legs and wipes his nose with the bottom of his shirt before he places both of his hands on Shiro’s shoulders and grips them tight. 

“Shiro, do you remember… what was it? Four years ago? When we fought?”

Shiro’s still crying a little, not hard enough to twist his face up, but Keith watches as the mere mention of the fight causes fresh tears to spill down his cheeks. He looks Keith dead in the eyes and Keith feels his heart break. “You mean when I tried to kill you.” 

Keith nods, acknowledging what happened all that time ago without giving it any power over what he wants to tell Shiro. “Do you remember what I said?”

Shiro’s brow furrows, his gaze is intent on Keith, searching his eyes for an answer. Shiro chews at the corner of his lips and Keith can see his gears working, looking for anything to fill the gap and struggling to do so. When he says, “I don’t,” Keith knows he’s not lying. 

He takes both of his hands off of Shiro’s shoulders and places them gently on either side of his face, ignoring the way Shiro’s eyes widen for a second at the unfamiliar touch before they return to their normal softness. “I told you I love you and I still do now.” and because Keith-- because he can’t bear to wait for an answer and because he can’t stand the possibility that Shiro might not feel the same-- Keith does something that he’s been wanting to do, been dreaming of doing for years upon years upon months and days and minutes and seconds lost within the folds of space and time. He kisses Shiro. 

It’s raw and open and wet with tears, but here, on whatever day, during whatever dobosh in whatever year he’s finally kissing Shiro. And here, on whatever quintant, during whatever tick in whatever minute, Shiro kisses him back. Shiro grips at the back of his head with his hand so hard it hurts, but Keith welcomes it, does the same for Shiro. For a minute, just the desperate press of lips on lips is enough but Keith wants more, needs more. He opens his mouth and kisses Shiro like he means it, like he knows how. Shiro’s hand moves from the back of his head to the side of his jaw and cups it gently. He makes Keith slow down, and Keith gives in and lets Shiro lead him one last time. Shiro kisses him slow and reverent, and Keith feels like every wasted second of his life doesn’t matter because of this, because of how Shiro is kissing him.

He’s spent so long loving Shiro, being too afraid to lose him. 

Now they’re almost sure they’re going to lose each other, because neither of them have seen anything like what the Galra have done to Earth, but it’s the fear of not being able to love how they want that is the most terrifying thing now. Keith feels it in the way Shiro kisses him. 

Shiro breaks apart, breathes a gasping breath against Keith’s lips and says words that somehow Keith now knows he’s been wanting to say for whoever knows how long, too. “I love _you_.” like the ‘too’ diminishes the meaning of it. Then, they’re kissing again. 

Keith blinks his eyes open while the sun is creeping its way through the orange particle barrier outside of Shiro’s window. He lifts his head up enough to look at Shiro, his face evened and open with sleep. Keith decides that his white hair makes him look like an angel. Keith wouldn’t be surprised if he really was one. He presses a kiss to Shiro’s chest and slides a bare leg between Shiro’s. 

“Morning,” Shiro mumbles, voice full of sleep and contentment, and Keith feels it too. Right now, what they have at this very bend in the line of space and time, what they have is enough for the both them. 

“How long have we been in this bed?” Keith says, smiling into Shiro’s skin. He swears he’s seen the sun rise and fall without their bodies parting for more than a moment. It must have been days. He doesn’t think it’s true. It couldn’t have been true. 

“I don’t know,” Shiro says. Then he kisses Keith’s head.

**Author's Note:**

> s7 broke me in the best of ways. 
> 
> follow me on tumblr @pieceofsheith or on twitter @ gay_shiro


End file.
